I am a PhD Student at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto advised by Priyank Chandra and Negin Dahya. My research interests lie at the crossroads of HCI and social justice. In particular, I'm interested in critically evaluating competing values that govern technologies, and in examining ways of integrating a wide range of values and interests that empower the marginalized in technology design and development.

Before UofT, I was fortunate to work with Joyojeet Pal, Nithya Sambasivan, Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Vivek Srinivasan, and Vinodkumar Prabhakaran. I graduated with a M.A. in Regulatory Governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India in 2016, and a B.com (Hons.) from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi, India in 2014. For more details, check my CV or feel free to email me.

Publications

Inheriting Discrimination: Datafication Encounters of Marginalised Workers in India
Azhagu Meena*, Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Vivek Srinivasan, Shivani Kapania, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, Nithya Sambasivan ICTD'22 | International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies and Development
pdf

Counting to be Counted: Anganwadi Workers and Digital Infrastructures of Ambivalent Care
Azhagu Meena*, Palashi Vaghela*, Joyojeet Pal (* = Equal Contribution)
CSCW'22 | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
pdf

Misinformation as a Window into Prejudice: COVID-19 and the Information Environment in India
Syeda Zainab Akbar, Anmol Panda, Divyanshu Kukreti, Azhagu Meena*, Joyojeet Pal CSCW'21 | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
pdf

Digital Divine: Technology use by Indian Spiritual Organizations
Azhagu Meena*, Varuni Bhatia, Joyojeet Pal
ICTD'20 | International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies and Development
pdf

Performing Gender, Doing Politics: Social Media and Women Election Workers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu
Azhagu Meena*, Drupa Dinne Charles*, Simiran Lalavani, Syeda Zainab Akbar, Divya Siddharth, Joyojeet Pal
(* = Equal Contribution)
ICTD'20 | International Conference on Information & Communication Technologies and Development
pdf

Grassroots Campaign in Technology-Enabled Elections: Madurai and Thiruvananthapuram in 2019 Indian ections
Drupa Dinne Charles, Azhagu Meena*, Joyojeet Pal HICSS'20 | Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
pdf

Workshops and Posters

Tactics in Epistemic Production by the Marginalized on Data-driven Systems
Azhagu Meena*, Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Vivek Srinivasan, Shivani Kapania, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, Nithya Sambasivan CHI'21 | Workshop on Artificially Intelligent Technology for the Margins: A Multidisciplinary Design Agenda

How India voted: The use of social media
Joyojeet Pal, Azhagu Meena*, Drupa Dinne Charles, and Anmol Panda Seminar'19 | In Seminar

Social Media, Politics, and the Process of Engagement in the Indian Context
Divya Siddarth, Anmol Panda, Ram Chandrasekharan, Drupa Charles, Shubi Agarwal, Srujana Kamath, Azhagu Meena* ICTD'19 | Open Session in International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

SRCC
2011 - 2014
TISS Mumbai
2014 - 2016
Tata Trusts
2017 - 2018
Microsoft Research
2019 - 2020
Google Research
2020 - 2021
University of Toronto
2022 - Present